[QUOTE=bkeiller;54329]Fezz,
Do you like AFC +250 better or SB +550? I would think they would be favored in the game or at worst Pick so shouldn't SB be +500?[/QUOTE]
A bit more satisfying answer than Fezzik gave above is to do the math. Its actually very simple and quite elegant.
To compute your edge on any bet you need to estimate the Expected Value of the bet.
The EV is given by:
EV = Pw * Aw - Pl *Al where Pw, Pl are the probabilities of NE winning and losing (either not getting to the final event and/or not winning it) and Aw and Al are the amounts won or lost on the bet.and/
Now Aw = B * ML and Al = B for our case where B = the amount bet, and since ML is a + number.
Applying this to the AFC bet we get for the EV of the afc bet:
EVafc = B * (2.5 * Pwafc) - B * Plafc and a similar equation for EVsb.
We ask for when is EVsb > EVafc, i.e. when is the SB bet (take the case of +550 SB odds) better than the AFC bet when we use the same bet amount?
[B]EVsb > EVafc gives B * (5.5 * Pwsb - Plsb) > B * ( 2.5 * Pwafc - Plafc)[/B]
using Pl = 1 - Pw (i.e. there's a 100% chance of either winning or losing the bet), we get
6.5 * Pwsb - 1 > 3.5 Pwafc - 1 => Pwsb > 3.5 * Pwafc /6.5, but to win the SB we have to win the AFC, we know that Pwsb = Pwsbg * Pwafc where Pwsbg is the prob of winning the actual SB game.
[B]so at +550, the SB bet is better if you make the odds of NE winning the SB game as > 3.5/6.5 or 53.8%[/B]
if the SB odds are only +500, you need to have the SB games odds of NE winning as > 3.5/6 or 58.3%
Its easy to see that the general formula is SB win% > (MLconf +1)/ (MLsb +1) for positive MLs
